WEBVTT 00:00:00.500 --> 00:00:05.320 Hello again everyone, and thank you, as Fraser said, for being with us this morning and for 00:00:05.320 --> 00:00:10.160 sharing with us as we now come to study God's Word. So we're going to be looking in Luke 00:00:10.160 --> 00:00:14.359 chapter 20, and the passage I'm sure will come up on the screen if you want to turn 00:00:14.359 --> 00:00:19.140 to it. It will be in your pew Bible as well. We're going to look at the first 18 verses 00:00:19.140 --> 00:00:23.859 today. Luke chapter 20, reading from verse 1. And it says, 00:00:23.920 --> 00:00:28.179 One day Jesus was teaching the people in the temple courts and proclaiming the good news. 00:00:28.179 --> 00:00:33.000 The chief priests and the teachers of the law, together with the elders, came up to him. 00:00:34.039 --> 00:00:38.799 Tell us by what authority you are doing these things, they said. Who gave you this authority? 00:00:39.799 --> 00:00:47.500 He replied, I will also ask you a question. Tell me. John's baptism. Was it from heaven or of human 00:00:47.500 --> 00:00:53.480 origin? They discussed it among themselves and said, if we say it from heaven, he will ask, 00:00:53.479 --> 00:00:59.219 why didn't you believe him? But if we say of human origin, all the people will stone us, 00:00:59.659 --> 00:01:05.479 because they are persuaded that John was a prophet. So they answered, we don't know where it was from. 00:01:06.679 --> 00:01:10.859 Jesus said, neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 00:01:11.859 --> 00:01:14.000 He went on to tell the people this parable. 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:19.420 A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. 00:01:20.459 --> 00:01:25.260 At harvest time, he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the 00:01:25.260 --> 00:01:31.859 vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent them away empty handed. He sent another servant, 00:01:31.980 --> 00:01:38.640 but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty handed. He sent still a third 00:01:38.640 --> 00:01:43.760 and they wounded him and threw him out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, what shall I do? 00:01:44.260 --> 00:01:50.379 I will send my son whom I love. Perhaps they will respect him. But when the tenants saw him, 00:01:50.439 --> 00:01:56.560 they talked the matter over. This is the heir, they said. Let's kill him and the inheritance will be ours. 00:01:57.460 --> 00:02:03.420 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to 00:02:03.420 --> 00:02:10.780 them? He will come and kill these tenants and give the vineyard to others. When the people heard this, 00:02:10.819 --> 00:02:18.219 they said, God forbid. Jesus looked directly at them and asked, then what is the meaning of that 00:02:18.219 --> 00:02:25.680 which is written? The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Everyone who falls on 00:02:25.680 --> 00:02:32.020 that stone will be broken to pieces. Anyone on whom it falls will be crushed. 00:02:32.020 --> 00:02:38.920 I pray that God will help us to understand his word this morning and to apply it in our hearts. 00:02:40.480 --> 00:02:45.600 This is the handshake between, before perhaps the most famous television interview in history, 00:02:45.820 --> 00:02:51.060 it's David Frost and Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon had been president of the United States, 00:02:51.420 --> 00:02:57.060 had been forced to resign over the Watergate scandal, and he was keen in some kind of way to restore 00:02:57.060 --> 00:03:03.599 his reputation and perhaps to get a role again in public life. And he thought that being interviewed 00:03:03.599 --> 00:03:09.539 by David Frost would be a relatively easy option. He didn't expect terribly many hard questions from 00:03:09.539 --> 00:03:14.199 David Frost. Perhaps a bit like last week when Donald Trump was interviewed by Piers Morgan. Perhaps 00:03:14.199 --> 00:03:20.140 thought that would be a relatively straightforward one for him. Well, for Nixon to begin with, it was. 00:03:20.139 --> 00:03:25.799 He was very good at stonewalling, and from what's said, the first few interviews that Frost conducted 00:03:25.799 --> 00:03:32.439 with him were pretty dull and nothing really emerged from them. But as time went on, it seems that Nixon 00:03:32.439 --> 00:03:40.759 got worn down. And at the end, he made quite a number of revelations that perhaps he had never intended to 00:03:40.759 --> 00:03:46.319 at the beginning. He said, for example, that if something was illegal, if he was president of the United States, 00:03:46.319 --> 00:03:52.340 he could do it anyway because he had that authority. And he ended up apologizing to the American people 00:03:52.340 --> 00:03:58.680 for letting them down. Frost's interview technique ultimately and the barrage of questions that he 00:03:58.680 --> 00:04:06.459 fired at Nixon broke him and led him to say things perhaps he didn't intend to. We've come today to 00:04:06.459 --> 00:04:13.299 Luke chapter 20, and this is a chapter of the Jewish religious leaders trying to break the Lord Jesus down 00:04:13.300 --> 00:04:19.900 and get him to say something that will incriminate him and allow them either for them to arrest him 00:04:19.900 --> 00:04:24.720 because he says something that suggests he's doing something illegal, or alternatively to turn the 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:31.379 people against him, and that then would give them an opportunity to take him and to kill him as they 00:04:31.379 --> 00:04:38.620 intended to. Now, as it turned out, the Lord Jesus was a lot smarter and a lot more wise than those who 00:04:38.620 --> 00:04:44.199 came to question him. And when they questioned him about authority, about procedural things, 00:04:44.259 --> 00:04:49.459 as we have in this passage, when they questioned him about politics, about allegiance to Caesar, 00:04:49.540 --> 00:04:53.840 which we'll be looking at next week, or when they questioned him about a kind of abstruse religious 00:04:53.840 --> 00:04:57.660 question where someone had been married several times and who were they married to in heaven, 00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:03.560 the Lord Jesus, with his answers, was able to confound them and to continue to astonish the people 00:05:03.560 --> 00:05:10.680 with his wisdom. And there was no opportunity for the religious leaders to get him and to trap him. 00:05:11.319 --> 00:05:15.379 And indeed, when they eventually did arrest him in the Garden of Gethsemane in the dead of night, 00:05:15.759 --> 00:05:20.899 Jesus could say to them, well, I was in the temple courts all week and you never arrested me then. 00:05:21.160 --> 00:05:25.939 Why do you have to come with swords and spears and arrest me under cover of darkness? 00:05:26.480 --> 00:05:32.019 He was too wise for them. And over the next couple of weeks, I hope we'll see that, 00:05:32.019 --> 00:05:38.120 as we see the attempts of religious leaders to trap Jesus and the way in which he was able to deal 00:05:38.120 --> 00:05:44.839 with that and to expose their hypocrisy and to present to them the fact that they would be judged 00:05:44.839 --> 00:05:51.099 for the fact that they had rejected him. Now, what we're looking at today, I think, 00:05:51.180 --> 00:05:55.979 is all to do with authority. It's explicitly that at the beginning of the passage, 00:05:55.980 --> 00:06:02.900 and I think that theme runs right through it. It is questions of authority. So let's begin by 00:06:02.900 --> 00:06:09.700 thinking, what does authority mean? We could define authority, I think, as legitimate power, 00:06:10.240 --> 00:06:16.500 as having power or influence, but not that's been usurped or that's been taken wrongly from someone 00:06:16.500 --> 00:06:22.960 else that is legitimate and that allows you to do and to say the things that you want to. 00:06:22.959 --> 00:06:28.579 Now, the religious leaders, they were the authorities, the priests and elders and so on, 00:06:29.039 --> 00:06:36.419 and they saw that as being part of their entitlement. Perhaps not that different from 21st century Britain, 00:06:36.859 --> 00:06:42.579 having authority depended on who you were, who your parents were, who you knew, what kind of wealth 00:06:42.579 --> 00:06:48.279 you had, what your knowledge was. And the people who were in positions of authority, they felt that they 00:06:48.279 --> 00:06:54.659 had an entitlement to that, and that anyone who came in and tried to seize that didn't have genuine 00:06:54.659 --> 00:07:02.379 authority. And so, of course, for them, Jesus was someone to be opposed. He had come kind of out of 00:07:02.379 --> 00:07:08.139 nowhere, come from Galilee, and he'd gathered a lot of people around him, become very popular 00:07:08.139 --> 00:07:14.459 with the multitudes, and the religious leaders thought that he was trying to usurp their authority. 00:07:14.459 --> 00:07:20.219 And then to cap it all, he came into Jerusalem on the donkey, accepted the praise of the people, 00:07:20.639 --> 00:07:25.539 and he even went into the temple and started throwing over the tables of the moneylenders 00:07:25.539 --> 00:07:32.179 and destroying in some ways what everything that the chief priests and the rulers stood for 00:07:32.179 --> 00:07:38.379 and their livelihood, their way in which they got wealth. They saw him as someone who didn't have 00:07:38.379 --> 00:07:44.800 authority. But of course, the authority of Jesus was different. He had authority because he is God's 00:07:44.800 --> 00:07:50.500 son, so he has the ultimate authority from that point of view. And the authority he demonstrated 00:07:50.500 --> 00:07:58.040 was through his character and through his teaching and through the way that he acted. So, for example, 00:07:58.600 --> 00:08:04.399 it could be said earlier in the gospel that the people wanted to listen to Jesus because he spoke 00:08:04.399 --> 00:08:10.819 with authority and not like the teachers of the law. And what that meant was that Jesus was able to say 00:08:10.819 --> 00:08:15.839 things to them because he was God's son without having to refer back to all the Jewish traditions. 00:08:16.219 --> 00:08:22.379 He was able to teach by himself, whereas all the religious leaders, they were very careful to make 00:08:22.379 --> 00:08:27.339 sure they didn't go against anything that had been said. Jesus cut right through that and he said, 00:08:27.339 --> 00:08:33.879 it's been said to you this, but I say this, and the people recognized his authority. Then displayed 00:08:33.879 --> 00:08:42.539 authority over illness, over death, and indeed over sin in being able to forgive people. So Jesus had 00:08:42.539 --> 00:08:51.759 authority, but it was not the same authority as the religious leaders had. And so they dispute his 00:08:51.759 --> 00:08:57.439 authority. They don't understand it. And they disputed. Verse two, tell us by what authority 00:08:57.439 --> 00:09:03.860 you're doing these things, who gave you this authority? Now, on the surface, that's not a bad 00:09:03.860 --> 00:09:09.659 question. If someone were to come into this church and overturn all the tables there in the foyer 00:09:09.659 --> 00:09:15.759 and start shouting about what a bunch of crooks we are and how we aren't really doing God's will, 00:09:16.159 --> 00:09:20.460 then I think we might quite legitimately say to them, well, what gives you the right to do 00:09:20.460 --> 00:09:25.840 and to say that. And that is, in a sense, what the leaders here were doing. 00:09:27.900 --> 00:09:33.840 But they weren't really wanting to know the answer. They weren't doing it out of a sense of, 00:09:33.940 --> 00:09:38.560 well, let's find out what authority he has got. They were doing it to try to trap him, 00:09:39.280 --> 00:09:44.259 either to get him to say, I am God's son, at which point they could accuse him of blasphemy, 00:09:44.259 --> 00:09:50.759 even though it was true, or perhaps to kind of shrink away and be a bit reticent. Then they could 00:09:50.759 --> 00:09:58.919 arrest him for an act of vandalism or whatever. They weren't really interested in knowing the answer. 00:09:59.720 --> 00:10:05.759 And Jesus recognizes that. And so he doesn't immediately answer their question. He poses 00:10:05.759 --> 00:10:11.759 them a question instead. And it might look as if he's not answering their question, but actually 00:10:11.759 --> 00:10:19.220 he is. So he asked the question about the baptism of John, John the Baptist. John the Baptist was the 00:10:19.220 --> 00:10:25.480 forerunner of Jesus, the one who had pointed people to Jesus. But the question is not about that, 00:10:25.559 --> 00:10:32.200 about what John said about Jesus. It was about the baptism of John. Was that from God or from man? 00:10:32.200 --> 00:10:37.580 Now we know the answer was from God. I guess the religious leaders knew the answer was from God, 00:10:37.820 --> 00:10:44.280 but they had rejected John. John's baptism was a baptism of repentance, of people recognizing 00:10:44.280 --> 00:10:50.340 that they had done lots of things wrong and that they needed to change their lives. And baptism was 00:10:50.340 --> 00:10:56.460 a symbol that they were doing that, that they had repented, that they had changed. And religious 00:10:56.460 --> 00:11:01.660 leaders, frankly, were too proud to do that. They didn't want people to see that they needed to 00:11:01.659 --> 00:11:08.179 repent. They wanted to be seen to be above that. And so they rejected John and wanted to have nothing 00:11:08.179 --> 00:11:15.759 to do with him. And yet when Jesus asked the question, he puts them in a real quandary. 00:11:16.679 --> 00:11:21.279 They're not really interested in what the answer is at this point. They're interested in how it will 00:11:21.279 --> 00:11:27.439 appear, whichever answer they give. And they say, well, we can't say that he was from God, or they say, 00:11:27.440 --> 00:11:34.440 why didn't you believe him? We can't say that he wasn't from God, or the people will try to kill us. 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:41.820 So they say, we don't know, a real kind of cop-out kind of answer. But Jesus, in asking about John, 00:11:42.060 --> 00:11:50.220 was answering their question, because if John was from God as he was, then because he pointed to Jesus 00:11:50.220 --> 00:11:55.720 as the one who was greater than him, the one who was the Lamb of God, then that would say that Jesus was 00:11:55.720 --> 00:12:03.480 from God that he was the Son of God, that he had authority to do the things he did. So he did answer 00:12:03.480 --> 00:12:11.440 the question, but he answered it in a slightly different way. What can we do to apply that to us? 00:12:12.759 --> 00:12:17.340 I think a lot of us, when we think about talking to people who aren't Christians, who aren't following 00:12:17.340 --> 00:12:24.100 Jesus, are really worried about the kind of questions they might ask us. And if people aren't really 00:12:24.100 --> 00:12:30.159 interested in learning about Christian faith, then they will ask questions that are designed to 00:12:30.159 --> 00:12:37.899 deflect us and to detract from the real issues. And it's very easy for us to get dragged into being 00:12:37.899 --> 00:12:44.540 very defensive, to trying to answer the questions they ask directly, and to get deflected away from 00:12:44.540 --> 00:12:50.759 being able to talk to them about the real things, the things that really matter. And I think if we take 00:12:50.759 --> 00:12:57.259 Jesus' example both here and indeed in the other questions he's asked in this chapter, then sometimes 00:12:57.259 --> 00:13:03.819 we need to be not so defensive, but to be quite assertive in directing the conversation and in 00:13:03.819 --> 00:13:09.700 helping people to get to the real issues. They might be trying to avoid them, but to help them to get to 00:13:09.700 --> 00:13:16.759 the real issues. And the real issue, as far as we're concerned as followers of Jesus, 00:13:16.759 --> 00:13:24.500 is who is Jesus and what does he mean to us? And we need to get people onto that question rather than 00:13:24.500 --> 00:13:32.080 anything else. And a really good way to do it is to encourage people to read the stories about Jesus 00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:39.240 and the words of Jesus. Perhaps as some people in this church do, to spend time sitting reading with 00:13:39.240 --> 00:13:45.439 them and discussing the Bible with them, or even just to give them a book that describes what Jesus' 00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:51.120 life was. There's a lot of copies of this in the foyer, the information point. It's just the gospel 00:13:51.120 --> 00:13:56.980 by Luke, but it says Jesus, the facts. And it would be good if we could just encourage people who might 00:13:56.980 --> 00:14:02.080 have some interest or are asking questions just to take the gospel of Luke or any of the other gospels 00:14:02.080 --> 00:14:10.260 indeed, and to read it and to see for themselves what it was that Jesus said and did and who he is. 00:14:11.040 --> 00:14:15.400 And similarly, if you are asking questions, if you're not very sure this morning about Christian faith, 00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:20.160 I would encourage you to take a copy of this. It's absolutely free. Read it through. Read it with 00:14:20.160 --> 00:14:27.500 an open mind, looking for God to speak to you and to find out about who Jesus is and what he can do 00:14:27.500 --> 00:14:36.440 for you. So Jesus' authority is disputed at the beginning, and he asks a slightly question to the 00:14:36.440 --> 00:14:41.620 side, but he really brings it round to the point. And if the Pharisees and the chief priests and so on 00:14:41.620 --> 00:14:46.179 were willing to listen to him, then they would have got the right answer that his authority was 00:14:46.179 --> 00:14:54.879 from God. But just to drive it home, Jesus tells a parable, a parable that's in the next few verses. 00:14:54.960 --> 00:15:01.259 I've called this one authority despised. This is one of these parables in the Bible. It's very easy 00:15:01.259 --> 00:15:07.799 to skip over. You read it and you think, yes, I understand that. Clearly in the parable, 00:15:07.799 --> 00:15:14.379 the vineyard owner is God, his son is Jesus, the servants that were sent are the prophets, 00:15:14.839 --> 00:15:20.879 and the tenants are the Jews or the Jewish leaders. Absolutely right. But we then kind of 00:15:20.879 --> 00:15:26.139 move on and say, well, this hasn't got very much to teach me. Perhaps if we look at it in a bit more 00:15:26.139 --> 00:15:31.019 detail, we recognize that it has parallels with an Old Testament parable in the book of Isaiah in 00:15:31.019 --> 00:15:36.019 chapter 5 about a vineyard. Slightly different story, but certainly the Jews, as Jesus told it, 00:15:36.019 --> 00:15:42.759 would have recognized that he was referring to that as well. But again, even if we do that, 00:15:42.840 --> 00:15:48.100 even if we go back to Isaiah, very easy to skip over it and to miss the point. 00:15:49.120 --> 00:15:56.519 What is the key point of this parable? I think the key thing in this parable is what happens after the 00:15:56.519 --> 00:16:03.019 third servant comes back to the vineyard owner. So this guy, he's got the vineyard quite legitimately. 00:16:03.019 --> 00:16:08.159 He's sending his servants to get the rent in from the tenants, perfectly entitled to do that. 00:16:08.699 --> 00:16:14.159 And they come back, and they come back, each of them having been beaten up. And the language in 00:16:14.159 --> 00:16:20.279 the parable suggests it gets worse every time. And when the third servant comes back, the vineyard 00:16:20.279 --> 00:16:27.480 owners got a decision to make. Quite legitimately, he could say, well, I've had enough. I'm going to go and 00:16:27.480 --> 00:16:31.820 I'm going to take my army or I'm going to send the authorities. And we're going to deal with these 00:16:31.820 --> 00:16:39.460 people who are so rejecting and despising my authority. They won't play ball when I send my 00:16:39.460 --> 00:16:45.860 servants to them. Therefore, I'm going to go and do it by force. And he would have been perfectly 00:16:45.860 --> 00:16:53.080 entitled to do that. The law would have been on his side. But that's not what he does. 00:16:53.080 --> 00:16:59.340 Instead, he says, I'm going to have one more go. And this time, I'm going to send my son. 00:17:00.160 --> 00:17:06.539 And the language is very strong. I'm going to send my son whom I love. So he's going to send the one 00:17:06.539 --> 00:17:11.880 who is most precious to him in many ways, the son whom he loves. And he's going to hope that the 00:17:11.880 --> 00:17:20.600 tenants will then respect him and will pay the rent that is due. Now, this is tremendous grace being 00:17:20.599 --> 00:17:28.159 shown by the vineyard owner. Almost anyone in that situation would have gone and would have, 00:17:28.579 --> 00:17:36.480 by force, taken what was due to them. But he is willing to take the risk of sending his son 00:17:36.480 --> 00:17:42.859 and to see if they will recognize the authority that the son has and do what they should have been 00:17:42.859 --> 00:17:48.279 doing from the beginning. And presumably, if they do, then the vineyard owner will say to them, 00:17:48.279 --> 00:17:53.720 well, let's forget what's happened before. You've now paid your rent. Let's move forward together. 00:17:55.079 --> 00:18:01.920 And then he sends his son and the son is killed. And the vineyard owner must have recognized that 00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:07.980 was a possibility, but he still was determined he was going to do that. He would send his son. 00:18:08.759 --> 00:18:14.420 And then, of course, the parallel with God and with what he did becomes all the more powerful. 00:18:14.420 --> 00:18:21.220 Israel is a nation over many hundreds of years, had rejected God at various different times, 00:18:21.519 --> 00:18:25.180 had scorned the prophets, had nothing to do with them. Some of them had been ill-treated. 00:18:25.840 --> 00:18:30.420 And God could have said, well, let's just give up on this. They're clearly not worth it. 00:18:31.060 --> 00:18:39.800 But God chooses to send his son, to send the Lord Jesus into the world and to allow men to take him 00:18:39.799 --> 00:18:51.599 and to kill him. And that is a tremendous demonstration of the grace that God has and that God wanted to show. 00:18:52.559 --> 00:18:59.500 To give the one who was most valuable to him and to allow men to kill him. And through that, 00:18:59.619 --> 00:19:05.599 as we know, for him to take the punishment for sin and to allow us to have forgiveness 00:19:05.599 --> 00:19:12.819 and a relationship with God. That, I think, is the key point in the parable. That is where Jesus 00:19:12.819 --> 00:19:20.480 really brings home that these people he was talking with had rejected, had despised the authority that 00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:27.359 came from God himself. I think it's probably also significant in the context of the parable 00:19:27.359 --> 00:19:32.980 that the people knew that it was the son who had been sent to them. These tenants were under no 00:19:32.980 --> 00:19:38.019 illusion that the landowner had sent his son. And indeed, they thought, this is our opportunity. 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:42.660 Get rid of the son. There's no one to inherit. We can then keep the vineyard. 00:19:43.440 --> 00:19:50.200 I think equally in their hearts, the religious leaders, the chief priests and so on, they knew 00:19:50.200 --> 00:19:55.079 that Jesus was God's son. And yet they weren't willing to accept him. And ultimately, 00:19:55.079 --> 00:20:02.860 they got him put to death. And so Jesus says, there will be consequences for that. 00:20:02.980 --> 00:20:10.360 God's grace is wonderful. It's awesome. It's past our understanding. But if people continually 00:20:10.360 --> 00:20:17.839 reject him and reject his son, at the end, there are consequences. And so the people who had done 00:20:17.839 --> 00:20:26.099 this thing, Jesus says, that then the owner will come and he will make sure that justice is meted out. 00:20:26.099 --> 00:20:32.659 Authority was despised. Authority was despised and there ultimately was a price to pay. 00:20:34.639 --> 00:20:40.219 Finally, fairly briefly, in the last couple of verses, I've described it as authority displayed. 00:20:41.039 --> 00:20:48.359 So Jesus, as a kind of extra to the parable, quotes a verse which is from Psalm 118 in the Old Testament. 00:20:48.359 --> 00:20:53.759 The stone, the builders rejected, has become the cornerstone. 00:20:55.359 --> 00:21:00.659 Now, there's a bit of uncertainty about exactly what is meant here by the cornerstone. And you get 00:21:00.659 --> 00:21:05.279 lots of different views on it. Cornerstone, I think we probably naturally think of as part of the 00:21:05.279 --> 00:21:09.939 foundations of a building. When we're saying Jesus Christ cornerstone, we're thinking of him 00:21:09.939 --> 00:21:15.179 as Christ's lone cornerstone. We're thinking of him as being the foundation of our faith. 00:21:15.180 --> 00:21:21.060 I'm not sure that's what's intended here. Some versions say it's the capstone or the head of the 00:21:21.060 --> 00:21:25.940 corner. So where the cornerstone in the ground is the first part of the foundations it's built 00:21:25.940 --> 00:21:32.680 and that gives direction to the building, the capstone or the cornerstone on top is the last piece 00:21:32.680 --> 00:21:37.759 that's put into place and that demonstrates that the builder has got all his calculations right, 00:21:38.080 --> 00:21:43.060 that it fits perfectly where it should, and that it holds the top part of the building together 00:21:43.059 --> 00:21:49.079 and gives a stable structure. I think that's what's intended here. It certainly looks like a stone 00:21:49.079 --> 00:21:53.559 that wasn't used at the beginning but was used later, and also there's the reference to it falling 00:21:53.559 --> 00:22:01.079 on people. It doesn't really matter from the point of view of the application. What Jesus is saying is 00:22:01.079 --> 00:22:05.240 the stone the builders rejected, and that's clearly him, and it makes clear elsewhere in the Old Testament 00:22:05.240 --> 00:22:11.720 that's him. The stone the builders rejected is the one who becomes the most important one of all, 00:22:12.380 --> 00:22:18.500 who the builder, the architect of the building chooses to take the most important position. 00:22:19.180 --> 00:22:23.740 And of course that is a reference to the fact that having been through death, having suffered, 00:22:24.140 --> 00:22:30.120 having died for our sins, Jesus was raised from the dead, and he is now at the place of authority, 00:22:30.119 --> 00:22:39.059 the place of power, the place of greatest esteem at the side of the Father in heaven. And one day he will 00:22:39.059 --> 00:22:46.000 come back, and his authority will be completely clear to everybody as he rules in righteousness. 00:22:46.819 --> 00:22:53.119 The stone the builders rejected, the one whose authority was despised, ultimately his authority will be 00:22:53.119 --> 00:22:59.879 displayed, and everyone will see it. And again at the end, there is this thought of judgment about those who 00:22:59.880 --> 00:23:06.120 reject the stone, that it falls on them or they fall on it, there will be punishment for those who keep 00:23:06.120 --> 00:23:14.300 rejecting Jesus. So important that all of us accept Jesus for who he is, and accept what he's done for us, 00:23:14.540 --> 00:23:16.640 and have our trust in him. 00:23:19.460 --> 00:23:25.380 Just to finish, this gentleman here is King Hussein of Jordan. King Hussein drew Jordan for, I think, 00:23:25.380 --> 00:23:31.680 about 47 years towards the end of the last century. In the latter part of his life, he became highly 00:23:31.680 --> 00:23:38.240 respected as a statesman, as a worker for peace in the Middle East, and at his funeral, almost all the 00:23:38.240 --> 00:23:44.140 leaders from the world, I think about four American presidents, went to attend his funeral as recognition 00:23:44.140 --> 00:23:51.180 of what he had done in the cause of Middle Eastern peace. But King Hussein, like many leaders in that part of the 00:23:51.180 --> 00:23:56.900 country, he was in a volatile region, and there were people who didn't want him to be king. 00:23:57.500 --> 00:24:01.820 People who didn't feel that he was doing the right thing, people perhaps from different sects or from 00:24:01.820 --> 00:24:08.440 different ethnic groups who didn't want King Hussein to rule over them. And so several times during his reign, 00:24:08.720 --> 00:24:15.519 there were plots against him. On one particular occasion, King Hussein heard about a plot against him. 00:24:15.519 --> 00:24:21.960 And indeed he heard that the key plotters, some of his army generals, were meeting in a hotel not very 00:24:21.960 --> 00:24:29.579 far away from his palace. A king Hussein called in his private helicopter and he said to the pilot, 00:24:30.019 --> 00:24:37.819 you fly me over to where the plotters are, land on the roof, and I'll go down. If you hear the sound of 00:24:37.819 --> 00:24:44.660 gunshots coming from inside, then you just fly away, don't bother waiting or doing anything about it. 00:24:45.519 --> 00:24:49.940 King Hussein went down and he went into the room where the plotters were, and I'm sure they were 00:24:49.940 --> 00:24:57.299 kind of staggered to see him coming in. But he said to them, if you go ahead with your plot, 00:24:58.139 --> 00:25:04.779 and if you try to overthrow me, there's going to be civil war. There are going to be tens of thousands 00:25:04.779 --> 00:25:11.460 of people killed in this power struggle for our country. So I'll tell you what you should do. 00:25:11.460 --> 00:25:18.460 Shoot me and then you can have power. There will be a peaceful transition and instead of lots of 00:25:18.460 --> 00:25:25.140 people dying, then just one person will be killed. And at that point, all the plotters came forward 00:25:25.140 --> 00:25:31.140 and they pledged allegiance to him and recognized that he was the true ruler of Jordan. 00:25:32.660 --> 00:25:39.360 King Hussein was willing to take that risk and to make that sacrifice if necessary for his people. 00:25:39.359 --> 00:25:46.979 In this parable here, the ruler of the vineyard was willing to take the risk and to send his son 00:25:46.979 --> 00:25:54.599 to these people. King Hussein's risk worked out. He kept his power and he kept peace in the land. 00:25:55.139 --> 00:26:00.179 You say the vineyard owner's risk didn't work out. He hoped that the people would recognize the 00:26:00.179 --> 00:26:08.000 authority of his son and would respond, and they didn't kill the son. When we think of the reality 00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:15.480 in the Bible, God didn't take a risk. Taking a risk implies there could be two possible, 00:26:15.559 --> 00:26:22.619 or at least two possible outcomes. God sent his son to us knowing his son would be killed. 00:26:23.319 --> 00:26:32.160 He voluntarily gave his son so that we could have forgiveness. Jesus voluntarily came into the world, 00:26:32.160 --> 00:26:39.279 lived this life where he demonstrated the love and the authority of God, and went to the cross and did it 00:26:39.279 --> 00:26:46.980 willingly. And we now need to think how are we going to respond to that. In a few minutes, many of us will 00:26:46.980 --> 00:26:54.720 be taking communion together. As we do that, let's reflect on the great love that God had for us 00:26:54.720 --> 00:27:02.259 and the grace that he showed in sending his son, knowing what the outcome would be. And let's also 00:27:02.259 --> 00:27:09.039 rejoice in the fact that Jesus died, but he rose again. He is alive and he is reigning today. 00:27:10.440 --> 00:27:18.000 If you don't yet know Jesus, if what I've been saying maybe in some ways makes sense, but it isn't 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:23.559 what your experience of him has been and you haven't understood exactly who he is or what he's done, 00:27:23.559 --> 00:27:29.539 then I do urge you to think about what it was that prompted Jesus to come into the world, for God to 00:27:29.539 --> 00:27:38.700 send him, and what that means for you today. Jesus came into the world so that we could be saved. 00:27:39.399 --> 00:27:46.679 God sent his son to be our saviour and to bring us forgiveness for all the wrong in our lives. 00:27:47.200 --> 00:27:52.059 And we need to recognise that Jesus is God's son, that he came with that purpose, 00:27:52.059 --> 00:27:58.779 and that he is the only one who can offer us forgiveness. He has the authority to forgive sins 00:27:58.779 --> 00:28:04.079 because he took the punishment for our sins and therefore when we come to him recognising, 00:28:04.259 --> 00:28:10.259 repenting of our sins and believing in him, then we can have forgiveness. We can have a relationship 00:28:10.259 --> 00:28:16.599 with God. We won't be like these tenants who rejected him. Rather, we'll be like those who accepted 00:28:16.599 --> 00:28:24.819 Jesus and to know his peace, his love and the hope that he gives. So all of us, let's go away reflecting 00:28:24.819 --> 00:28:32.500 on the grace of God this morning and what that means or can mean for us in our lives and make sure 00:28:32.500 --> 00:28:40.559 that we have accepted the authority of God's son, that we know him as our saviour. Let me pray and then 00:28:40.559 --> 00:28:43.079 we'll move on into our time of communion. Let's pray together. 00:28:48.019 --> 00:28:54.119 Our Father, we thank you for your son, the Lord Jesus. We thank you that he indeed has authority 00:28:54.119 --> 00:29:01.899 that comes from being divine, being God himself and authority too, given him by you, his father. 00:29:01.899 --> 00:29:08.940 Remember he said, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. And we bow this morning 00:29:08.940 --> 00:29:16.279 before him and we acknowledge him as our Lord, as our saviour, as the one to whom we owe absolute 00:29:16.279 --> 00:29:23.519 allegiance. We pray that you will help us, those of us who know him, to truly love him and to adore him 00:29:23.519 --> 00:29:29.640 and to live for him and to recognise daily the authority that he has over our lives. 00:29:30.600 --> 00:29:35.779 We pray that any who don't yet know the Lord Jesus may recognise the reason why he came and the 00:29:35.779 --> 00:29:41.460 difference they can make as they put their trust in him. We thank you for this time we've had together 00:29:41.460 --> 00:29:46.079 and we pray that you will continue to be with us now as we move on to remember the Lord Jesus 00:29:46.079 --> 00:29:51.879 and to think more of his sacrifice for us. We give you our thanks in his name. Amen.